Twelve Labs Secures $30 Million to Revolutionize Video AI with Advanced Multimodal Models and Global Partnerships
Twelve Labs, a pioneering video-specialized artificial intelligence (AI) company, has secured a strategic investment of $30 million. This significant funding round saw participation from global data platform companies Snowflake and Databricks, as well as SK Telecom, HubSpot Ventures, and In-Q-Tel. With this latest equity transaction, the total accumulated investment in Twelve Labs has now reached $107 million.
Founded in 2021, Twelve Labs has been at the forefront of video AI technology, developing advanced models such as the large-scale AI video language generation model Pegasus and the multimodal video understanding model Marengo. The company’s proprietary foundation models bring human-like understanding to videos, enabling precise semantic search, summarization, analysis, and Q&A through easy-to-integrate APIs. This empowers enterprises to effortlessly search, monetize extensive video libraries, extract insights, and repurpose content at scale.
Twelve Labs plans to leverage this investment to focus on technological advancement and business expansion. The company aims to secure world-class AI talent and invest resources in advancing its multimodal video understanding model Marengo and the large-scale AI video language generation model Pegasus. CEO Jae Lee emphasized the importance of these collaborations, stating that collaboration with global leading companies is an opportunity to provide video understanding technology to more enterprises and present a new paradigm in video AI.
SK Telecom, one of the strategic investors, has ambitious plans to enhance the video analysis capabilities of its AI assistant in collaboration with Twelve Labs. The AI assistant could perform text commands such as “Find a video of a baby taking their first steps” or “Show me videos of Son Heung-min and Kim Min-jae passing the ball.” It is also expected to summarize video content into text, such as “Summarize what is happening in this video.” SK Telecom is preparing to launch the global AI assistant “Aster (A*)” next year, following “A. (A dot),” to strengthen its related business.
Twelve Labs’ technology can understand and categorize the content of a video, making it easier and quicker to search for specific elements within a large volume of video data. The company’s primary clients are developers and product managers who use Twelve Labs’ technology to enhance their products and services. For example, an education technology company might use Twelve Labs’ AI to enable students to search lesson content in new ways, enhancing their learning and retention.
The company generates revenue by charging clients for using its technology. The effectiveness and speed of Twelve Labs’ platform, as well as its ability to outperform even the strongest open-source and commercial models, make it a valuable tool for businesses in various sectors. With the latest funding, Twelve Labs has also hired Yoon Kim as President and Chief Strategy Officer, further strengthening its leadership team.
This investment underscores the growing demand for advanced video AI solutions and Twelve Labs’ position as a leader in this field. The company’s commitment to technological innovation and strategic partnerships positions it well for continued growth and success in the video understanding market.
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